Dr. Janina Pawelz

Janina Pawelz is a researcher (non-resident fellow) in the research area “Societal Peace and Internal Security”. From 2021-2025 she was the Network Coordinator and Project Leader of the project "Patterns and Dynamics of Conspiracy Theories and Far-Right Ideologies in Times of Crisis" (NEOVEX), funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research. From 2017 to 2021, she worked as a research associate in the BMBF-funded joint projects PANDORA and KURI at the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy (IFSH) and in the Horizon 2020 project CRISEA, funded by the European Commission. At the Leibniz Institute German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA), she completed her doctoral research (2013-2016) on gangs in Southeast Asia and the Caribbean. She is a co-initiator and strategic advisor to the Federal Working Group "Against Online Hate." Janina Pawelz studied at the University of Hamburg and the Universitas Udayana in Indonesia. She has also worked multiple times as an international expert for the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ).

Janina Pawelz worked at the IFSH in the research area of "Societal Peace and Internal Security", focusing on political violence and radicalization, online propaganda, and mobilization towards violence within the far-right spectrum. Her current research concentrates on conspiracy theories and far-right ideologies and their societal impact on society and politics. One key theme is the study of these phenomena in social media. Other research interests in the field of peace and security include collective and urban violence, dynamics of violence, youth violence, gangs, and transformation processes of violent groups. She is interested in empirical methods, field research, development cooperation, and monitoring & evaluation.